Tag: Author

South Bay teen author shares love of coding through books

Posted on by [email protected]_84

In “The Code Detectives,” two middle school girls who love coding use artificial intelligence to solve mysteries. For 17-year-old author Ria Dosha, writing the book series is a way to advocate for increasing diversity within the technology field.

“I’ve brought a diverse cast of characters to life, with the series centering around Ramona Diaz, a powerful young girl of color,” says Ria, a student at Cupertino’s Monta Vista High School. “The book series gives young girls strong, fictional role models in technology and AI, and introduces them to AI topics in a compelling way, clearing common misconceptions.”

Ria writes what shoe knows, and vice versa. She is the founder of CodeBuddies, which uses workshops, panels, challenges and more to promote problem-solving through technology. She is also the founder of Monta Vista’s Women in AI club, where she teaches girls the impact of artificial intelligence in daily life.

Her work has

… Read More Read More

Author John Rocco retells the true story of Apollo 11 with amazing art and science

Posted on by [email protected]_84

“How We Got to the Moon”, out today (Oct. 6) peels back the curtain to expose the true story of NASA’s Apollo program and how people from all walks of life worked together to accomplish the impossible.

The new children’s book, fully titled “How We Got to the Moon: The People, Technology, and Daring Feats of Science Behind Humanity’s Greatest Adventure” (Random House Children’s Books, 2020) and written and illustrated by New York Times bestselling author and illustrator John Rocco, who wrote and illustrated “Blackout” and illustrated the famed series “Percy Jackson,” goes on sale today (Oct. 6). 

The book takes an immersive approach to NASA’s “moonshot” Apollo program, exploring the science behind the Apollo 11 journey and introducing some of the people who made the first crewed moon landing possible. 

“I wanted to make a book that I would have loved as a kid as a kid … and

… Read More Read More

Author Promises ‘No Filter’ Look At The Instagram Story

Posted on by [email protected]_84

Less than two years after photo-sharing mobile app Instagram launched a decade ago, its founders made the “gut-wrenching” decision to sell it to Facebook in a $1 billion deal.

Journalist Sarah Frier promises her book “No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram” is a revealing, behind-the-scenes look at how Instagram became a social media sensation as a member of Facebook’s family of online services.

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger wanted a quick way to share photos in an age when smartphones cameras had people capturing all kinds of moments in pictures.

The also wanted to add artistic touches, giving rise to “filters” that overlay effects to transform life moments into nostalgic memories.

Instagram’s founders also wanted to build a community, inviting just a select group of people to join at the start, such as artists or musicians with strong online followings.

Everyone was really just exploring and trying to provide

… Read More Read More

Interview with Friederike Otto, Author of Angry Weather

Posted on by [email protected]_84

In 2017, Hurricane Harvey dumped 60 inches of rain on Nederland, Texas. That was over the course of a few days. Notoriously rainy Seattle gets about 38 inches a year. The storm caused over $125 billion worth of damage, according to the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. Was it just a bizarre event, or was it caused by climate change?

In the past, climate scientists have been hesitant to say any particular weather event, no matter how wild, was due to the effects of global warming, greenhouse gases, and other human causes. But Dr. Friederike Otto and the World Weather Attribution team studied Harvey and determined that climate change made the rainfall more intense, causing between 12% and 22% more water to drop on Houston and its surrounding area.

It’s a relatively new science, determining “whether and to what extent anthropogenic — so human-induced — climate change alters the likelihood

… Read More Read More